Blended Learning for Further and Higher Education Students

Blended learning solutions for students

How EduCare’s services work for both staff induction training, and student blended learning at Solihull College and University Centre.

Solihull College and University Centre wanted to enhance the study programmes for their BTEC Health and Social Care students and approached EduCare to pilot the introduction of CPD certified training resources to the curriculum.

Keen to develop and improve their blended learning approach for students, the College’s Lead H&SC tutors mapped a number of EduCare’s Health and Social Care resources to H&SC BTEC curricula and discovered that a number of courses would be very useful to undertake. These BTEC’s were:

• BTEC Certificate in Health and Social Care
• BTEC Extended Certificate in Health and Social Care
• BTEC Foundation Diploma in Health and Social Care
• BTEC Extended Diploma

The College chose 7 EduCare resources to offer to 115 students as part of the pilot. Students were asked to complete some or all of these courses between October 2017 and April 2018. Students completed these courses either as part of a group session, or studied in their own time as part of the College’s requirement for students to complete 20% off the job training.

The EduCare courses students accessed were:

• Safeguarding Adults in Health and Social Care
• Safeguarding Children in Health and Social Care
• Mental Health, Dementia and Learning Disabilities in Health and Social Care
• Duty of Care, Privacy and Dignity in Health and Social Care
• Manual Handling in Health and Social Care
• First Aid Essentials in Health and Social Care
• Infection, Prevention and Control in Health and Social Care

EduCare’s Customer Service Team created profiles for each student on their state of the art learner management system (LMS), where, securely, the students could access the courses according to the order they were required to complete them, and by date. The College was provided with full reporting rights to demonstrate when students had started a course, were in progress, or completed. Students themselves could download and print their personalised CPD certificates as evidence of their learning.

Online induction training for staff

Solihull College and University Centre also used to deliver all staff induction training in person which was both time consuming and inefficient. The college also recognised that mandatory content was hard to keep up-to-date, as induction requirements for education settings continuously evolve as legislation and best practice evolve. A more efficient solution was sought.

Since 2012, approximately 600 staff per year have completed EduCare’s online safeguarding and duty of care training courses, either as part of their extended induction or as a refresher.
The courses college staff have taken include:

• Data Protection/GDPR
• Equality and Diversity
• Safeguarding Young People
• Child Protection
• The Prevent Duty
• FGM Awareness
• Safer Recruitment

EduCare’s range of courses have helped staff demonstrate CPD through downloadable personalised certificates that are available upon the successful completion of each course. As well as saving time and money, the college have also benefitted by being able to provide robust reports detailing staff progress and course completion. These are used to evidence essential training to funding agencies, Ofsted and other inspectorates.

Return to news

Video: Blended Learning Case Study - Solihull College & University Centre